Beyond Coding

Today we talk about mentorship in tech. One of the best things about mentorship is that it's a clear win-win. It helps the mentee gain clarity on specific situations or career questions. And it helps the mentor in mastering active listening and giving non-biased advice. Hope you like it! Enjoy :)

There's a lot going on over at bol.com, especially behind the scenes. Today Mirko van Ede (director of engineering) and Rogier Lommers (tech lead) join us to discuss one of their biggest ongoing projects: migrating to the cloud.  Enjoy!

One of my favourite things as a software developer is interacting with the community. It's a community that's about learning, sharing, collaborating, and paying it forward. All you have to do to be part of it is to engage with other people. Brian Vermeer is a person that has given back to the community so much so that he became Java champion.  Enjoy!

It takes great skill to turn an idea into a product. Especially when you're starting from scratch. Erwin did just that, and shares how he and his team built an app that could improve how kids are treated for anxiety.  Enjoy!

One of the key takeaways from this conversation is that we should favour progress over perfection. Especially as software developers, perfection is something that'll never come. Instead we should focus on progression and let the fear of the unknown drive us forward.  This is what drives Mahdi and how he got to his current position. He shares how he became tech lead, and what skills you should focus on to become one as well.  Enjoy!

Are you comfortable with what you're doing and the problems that might arise from that? In a way, that's what security and personal risk is all about.  Jeroen and Nanne provide some useful tips you can use to secure your own laptop and to reduce the risk of something bad happening. On top of that, they share what they've seen happen when that security is not there.  Enjoy!

Robby shares how he used to clash with leadership when he was a software engineer. Which lead to a lot of frustration. He didn't really understand why they clashed, but after freelancing for a while, he realised the answer lied in the lack of guidance and the quality of leadership he'd experienced. This realisation is what lead him to focus on his soft skills and go down the path of leadership. His way of giving back is to share with us what he's learned on what makes a good leader.  Enjoy!

Some people have trouble starting, but that’s not Juan. Instead, he looks further ahead at his goal to become great at what he does. Currently that’s analytics engineering, which fills the gap between data engineers and domain analysts in the data world! During our conversation, I was truly impressed by his work ethic. I think it's pretty inspring. Enjoy!

I was sceptical about Sales at first, but I love the way Richard lays it out: You’re facilitating the buying process, and it should lead to a win-win. It’s not a transaction. It’s knowing your product/service, and more importantly getting to know your customer, what their problems are and what they actually need. In this, it’s very similar to what a software engineer should know, as well about what they’re building and for whom they’re building it. I’m curious if you’ll see it that way as well. Enjoy!

Kevlin Henney, a tech visionary, discusses the next big disruption in tech, highlighting uneven tech distribution and the importance of learning from past experiences. Exploring complexities in software projects, the perpetual evolution in coding, the yin and yang balance in decision-making, and the impact of historical software disruptions. Delving into unpredictable tech predictions, quantum computing, hardware evolution, and diverse paths to the future.